Game Of The Year Editor’s Pick, 2024

When they first asked me to make a Game of the Year list, I considered putting UFO 50 down ten times. But, considering that I’d like to continue getting paid for future work here, I decided against that and made an honest breakdown of my favorite games of 2024. I also considered writing in Concord for every entry as a joke, but I recognize that would have been like lighting a massive firecracker and then wrapping my fingers around it to find out what happens.

Side note, 2024 was a weird year in games for me. I’m in the Max video game series “Game Changers” and somehow I became the cover photo of one of the episodes. I look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man’s failson. I also wrote an official parody novelization of the worst game ever made, Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties, which you can buy this very moment, and I finished another video game book coming out next April called Good Game, No Rematch, which you can pre-order now for everyone in your extended family and workplace. If I’m writing a year-end list, I’m plugging my own year-end stuff!

10

Tetris Forever

If there’s something I needed this year, it was the friendship between Henk Rogers and Alexey Pajitnov. While their interviews are in the non-game part of Tetris Forever, this collection was so bright and cheerful that it genuinely helped push me through a pretty annoying few weeks. Digital Eclipse has done amazing work with every Gold Master release, but this one is just full of so much heart. I don’t even have jokes for it. It was just nice.

Any video game release that makes me reconsider Hatris is a miracle.

9

Thank Goodness You’re Here!

This game is sweet and simple and short and perfect. You’re a very British guy solving very British people’s very British problems. It’s like if someone mashed together every BBC comedy I saw on its second-run in the US as a child. As an American, I’m sure this is an entirely inaccurate description. But also, as an American, I don’t care.

Every scene is a joke, every task is a gag. There is no filler in this game. No dead weight. You just walk around slapping things in tiny, hilarious sketch-length bits in the form of puzzles. This might be one of the most perfect video game comedies ever made and it’s just so delightful and happy.

8

Silent Hill 2

Bloober pulled off the heist, baby! I was a doubter and I was happy to be proven wrong. I still think the original Silent Hill 2 is a bit better as an experience, but I appreciate that this version is a remake that takes a few of its own liberties. Not big ones – but enough that I don’t feel like this is a retread or a replacement of the original.

You remember the early ‘00s when Western studios were remaking Japanese horror films by the dozen? You can argue whether or not they’re as good as the original, but some were still pretty great. This is basically that. A great remake of an amazing horror game by a team that had something to prove and – thankfully – did.

7

Home Safety Hotline

Thank God for my game hoarding. Home Safety Hotline just looked like a creepy, random horror game. So I bought it. I like finding stuff that I haven’t heard of before and impulse game purchases can provide some of the biggest surprises, bad and good.

And, hoo baby, Home Safety Hotline is good. If you haven’t played it, let me give you the least spoilery version: you’re an operator in the 1990s working for an agency that helps people with problems around the house. These problems might be weird sounds coming from the pipes or scratches in the walls. Your job is to refer to a digital guide of different possible – let’s say ‘anomalies’ – that could be causing the issue. You then tell the caller the proper answer and hope they don’t call back telling you that you accidentally ruined their lives.

6

Astro Bot

I told you all! I told you Astro Bot was coming! Sure, you could fit the number of people who played the VR game Astro Bot: Rescue Mission in an elevator, but we saw what was going on. We knew! And now, Astro Bot has finally taken its rightful place as one of the greatest platformers of all time.

While it feels like it was sold as a PlayStation reference machine – and it is – the game is actually very, very good. Better than that. It doesn’t even need the references. I understand why you’d need to sell a relatively small IP on bigger, related IP. I do. But it’s a sign of how good this game is that more people will probably remember it for the challenge levels than for finding a robot from Hot Shots Golf. Astro Bot just works and it’s something I’ll be playing again and again for years.

Honorable Mentions

5

Mouthwashing

As I write this list, I’m realizing that half the games are hyper cheerful and half are hyper depressing. Go figure.

Mouthwashing might be the length of a movie, but please, please, please, I beg you, do not let that stop you from playing it. It’s not just a great horror game, it’s a fascinating tragedy about how we spin out on our problems and hurt others to keep from confronting ourselves. Mouthwashing plays tricks with the gameplay to tell the story in a way I haven’t seen done this well since Eternal Darkness.

It’s hard to give you more info without spoiling it. Going in blind is probably the best way. Not every horror game needs dozens of hours and extra shooting gallery modes. Some just want to make you feel an overwhelming sense of dread. And, baby, that’s where I live!

4

Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Back to happiness! God bless this game. God bless Ichiban Kasuga and the team. The Like A Dragon/Yakuza games are so funny because they used to be sold in the West as these intensely serious crime dramas – until everyone realized that we also enjoy the goofy minigames and karaoke parts. Thankfully, the main story here is great and the mini games are even better. There’s a full, working Pokemon parody. There’s a full, working Animal Crossing parody. Even the most minor minigames are worth repeating.

And, hell, I appreciate that the mainline Like a Dragon games are RPGs now. I love it. I love the jokey turn-based combat. I love any roleplaying game that takes a setting other than ‘fantasy’, ‘sci-fi’, or ‘1950s Americana pastiche’. That last category I just made up contains both Earthbound and Fallout. Yet even with the setting – modern day Japan and Hawaii – we still get an extremely RPG-style story. Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth somehow nails the landing on operatic, melodramatic plot beats and weirdo gameplay designed to make you laugh.

Atlus really played the long game with the West, huh? After decades of being one of the other Japanese role playing companies, they’re now maybe the best?

Metaphor: ReFantazio isn’t perfect. Sometimes the theme of ‘bigotry is bad’ is heavy-handed, but effectively used. Other times, the theme of ‘bigotry is bad’ is heavy-handed, but confusingly dropped. Why does Heismay hate the Paripus so much? Do we ever find that out? I’m actually asking if I missed that story beat.

But the game’s theme is at its most effective when we’re not sure which solution to bigotry would be better. Everyone knows it’s bad. How do you actually fix it? The villain – while very, very villain-like – presents a compelling argument one way, while your companions have another, and some characters have ideas of their own. What feels like hamfisted messaging actually lands in an ambiguous spot: we all understand bigotry is bad, but simply noticing that it’s bad and patting yourself on the back does absolutely nothing to stop it. Stopping hate, it turns out, is the tricky part.

2

Balatro

God I love Balatro. God I hate Balatro. More than any other game, Balatro makes me feel like I’m doing nothing for hours. It absorbs me. It’s mindless and mindful. It’s meditative and self-destructive. A good run can feel like Heaven until the boss stops you from using any cards you’ve touched in the previous two rounds. It’s such a simple game that breeds so many complex, interesting strategies that completely fall apart at the last second. It’s a deck builder that stands out in a sea of endless deck builders.

If you haven’t played Balatro, this is your warning: it’ll eat up your life. You’ll realize two hours have passed and you’ve done nothing with yourself. Any potential you had is wasted. You’ll watch your friends post their career wins online and photos of their children and know that Balatro sucked that time away from you. You could’ve met somebody. You could’ve been somebody. But Balatro exists and that’s more important.

1

UFO 50

I just… I can’t describe how much I love this thing. Every time I open the game, I feel happy. Some of them, like Night Manor and Party House, would be incredible on their own. And beneath the surface of everything, UFO 50 hides additional little secrets that add a layer of mystery and give some fun backstory to the fictional video game console that all these fictional-but-real games play on.

UFO 50 is like if a three Michelin star restaurant opened an all-you-can-eat buffet. Somehow the sheer amount of games does nothing to reduce the clarity or quality of the package. Hell, this collection is less confusing to navigate than many real actual collections and – honestly – probably features more good games too. If you haven’t purchased UFO 50, I don’t know what to tell you. There is something for everybody. Bring it home for Christmas. Show it off. There’s so much to do. So much to see. Wonders beyond imagination.